Growing Your Own

Growing Your Own. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

More and more people are discovering the satisfaction of growing your own produce. Hank Will, editor with Grit magazine say people are rediscovering gardening.

WILL: Gardening has become more popular practically every month but certainly every quarter as a topic in our magazine and on our website and on our social media pages. You know that tells me that certainly from a gardening stand point totally into it, thinking about it, want to do it.

Will says that we are seeing growth of gardening even in cities.

WILL: In cities and small towns you see like a lot of the vacant lots are again now for lack of a better term being plowed up and producing vegetables in the summer time. I remember back in the 70’s when I was in school I was even one of the people that made use of vacant lots where buildings were torn down in Chicago and we grew all kinds of vegetables and it became this fun neighborhood center points where folks would come out of their apartment buildings. The next thing you know you had 20 people with a little chunk of a city lot growing all kinds of stuff.

He says that gardening fell out of favor for a long time.

WILL: I think the whole thing turned around when the economy got so weak not too many years ago. People turned to the food as a point of something they might be able to control about their lives - that if they can produce some themselves, they feel a little bit more secure is really what I think it is.

Not only has gardening become more popular with people but so has connecting on social media to talk about it and we will visit with Hank Will tomorrow about that.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.